History Paper - Katy Roeser Assimilate or Acculturate...

Katy Roeser
Assimilate or Acculturate
President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced the Cherokees, as well as
many other tribes, to surrender their land to the United States Government and move into
Indian Country, or what is present day Oklahoma. President Jackson’s rationale for
enforcing the Indian Removal Act was that the Native Americans were not worthy of
assimilating to white people. He agreed that they were part of the United States, but he
saw them as “neither [having] the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the
desire of improvement”
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to be able to fully assimilate with the superior white race. He
also believed that their culture would become extinct if they assimilated, so he ordered
the Cherokee people to move out of their land and into the West where they could live in
isolation and out of the way. Problems arose here though, because most of the Cherokees
were already assimilated with whites- they were married to whites, were Christian, and
were well educated. In fact, Chief John Ross and Elias Boudinot were both highly
educated. Chief John Ross was set adamantly in keeping his people in the Cherokee
homeland. Elias Boudinot believed that the Cherokees should sign a treaty with the
United States, thus guaranteeing the proper treatment of their people. John Ross believed
that even if the Cherokees did sign a treaty with the United States, it would not stop them
from doing something like this in the long run. Thus, he believed that the Cherokees
should stand up for their rights against the United States government until they were
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James L. Roark, Michael P. Johnson, Patricia C. Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson,
Susan M. Hartman, The American Promise: A History of the United States , (Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 371
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recognized and treated equally. Although this division between Ross and Boudinot split
up the Cherokee nation in 1830, Ross’ stance to hold true to Cherokee rights and beliefs,
and to fight and stand up against the unfair treatment by the United States government,
shows his loyalty to the Cherokee nation as he was only trying to do what was best for his
people.
John Ross argued that even if the Cherokee Nation was to sign a treaty with the
United States over the Indian Removal Act, nothing held the United States to honoring
such treaty. Prime example of this was the case of Worcester v. Georgia in 1832. In 1831,
Georgia declared that the Cherokee people would be held to state laws and thus the
United States would claim their land. The Cherokees, specifically John Ross, appealed to
the Supreme Court, and after several more cases, they finally won their battle. In 1832 the
Supreme Court ruled that they would recognize the Cherokee people as “a distinct
community, occupying its own territory, in which the laws of Georgia can have no
force.”
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